Dominion Construction Company and Grenville Crushed Rock

Operations at Deeks

The following two
articles are taken from "Around the Township", a publication by
Oxford-on-Rideau Township as a bi-centennial project in 1984. For
additional information about the locomotives used at Deeks, see the
article by Colin Churcher in Branchline, January 2009.DeeksInformation by
Harold Bolton, W.J. Evans, Edison Hanlan

The Rock Cut
was scrub covered property belonging to Bill Anderson, of Oxford Mills,
at the
time. There were about 100 acres here and previously owned by three
families.
Fifteen acres, between the C.P.R. north to the concession road, was
bought from
Ed Hanlan, in order to set up the crushing plant and railyard. Later,
another 8½ acres north of the township road, was bought
from the rear of
the Evans
farm for more rock. About 40 acres of the surface area had rock removed
Work began in
1919 but the crusher did not operate that year. The best year was in
1926, when
2,700,000 tons of crushed rock was taken out and crushed for ballast.
1933 was
the last year they crushed. After that time rock was crushed and
stockpiled and
the seasons were short.

At least 120
men worked there in opening operations but during Depression there were
less.
One summer when they were balancing the track, nearly 200 men were
working. The
camp whistle blew at 7:00 a.m., 12 noon, and 5:00 p.m. and could be
heard for
miles around. Men worked twelve hour shifts, beginning at 7:00 a.m.Wages were 40
50¢ an hour while a man and team received 80¢ an hour. Teams were
required
to draw the drills to the on location blacksmith shop for sharpening
and return
them to the drill location by night and also to draw the dynamite. The
biggest
blast set off at one time was two tons of dynamite. At one time there
were
seven crushers in a row and the biggest shovel carried four yards of
gravel.

The big hill
deposit was owned by the C.P.R. and the face of the rock was 30-32 feet
deep
and at one time they crushed right to the tracks and rocks were falling
on the
rail line. After that they moved but the north wall was not as deep as
the
south side.Groceries
came
in by train, from Montreal,
to the camp store which was operated by Ed Hanlan and later by brother,
George.
Movies were shown in the summer on Saturday nights.

Grenville
Crushed Rock Ltd. was the rock crushing and ballasting division of
Dominion
Construction Company. H.F. McLean, co-owner of the companies, was born
in North Dakota, and had come to Toronto in 1905.
Dominion Construction Co.
owned two huge rock quarries, this one and another at HawkLake.
Decks station was built when the Rock Cut was opened and named after
George S.
Decks, with whom McLean was closely
associated
in the business.

Many local men
worked here, some of them being -Jimmy Rintoul a secondary operator on
the
power shovel and rode the boom-cat; crusher men were Harry Hayward,
Milton
Ross, Steve Heaphy; electricians were Walter Copping and Don Dougall;
mechanic
- Earl Sears; Sammy Dillabough a trainman; Willie Dillabough and Cliff
Evans
were brakemen; all six members of the Evans family worked here - Mr.
Evans Sr.
drove the team and Billy succeeded him after his death, Clifford,
Clarence,
Jert and Roy; Jack White carpenter and Albert White , security. Others
who
worked were Delore Montroy, David and John Forbes, Jack Derrick,
Dominic Sauve,
Zach Bolton, Billy Mews, George Hobson, Fred Hillis, Eldon Flood and
George
Hyland. Charles Switzer was chief accountant and Bill Lafaver the
blacksmith.
When the
crushing job was completed in 1932 a bronze casted plate was made in
the shop
before they moved. McLean always
erected
acairn
in memory of those men who were injured or lost their life on the job.This bronze
plate was placed on the cairn with their names engraved as well as a
verse from
the poem "Sons of Martha".

In World War
II, 1940-1942, Deeks was reopened and used as a depot for war supplies.
About
33 to 35 men worked at this time. There were fourteen spur lines
running
through the cut and a train could be loaded and in Halifax in a few hours.

Since
that time
Deeks has been completely closed down.

There are no captions to these
pictures

Plant
Operations At Deeks

by Earl
Sears

My first
recollection of Harry F. McLean's work at Deeks was in 1921 and they
were
building bunk houses and a plant or plant extension

The entire
plant was powered from the boiler room on steam. Steam and steam
engines
furnished the power that operated the crushers and everything that was
used in
connection with the grading process that took place in the
manufacturing of
crushed rock.
The company was
called Grenville Crushed Rock Co. and they produced the rock ballast
which was
used on the C.P.R. line between Montreal
and Toronto.
It was put on at
a depth of almost two feet. This would help to eliminate, as much as
possible,
the dust that plagued passenger trains also it was a good way of
keeping
railway ties from rotting by having proper drainage.There was a
hill where the quarry was situated and it was called "The Rock Cut"
by the local people as it was opened when the C.P.R. came through the
area. The
cut was double track width. The crown of the hill was about mid-point
of the
quarry. Our operating season did not take us into winter but very often
after
the plant was closed down some people would be called back to load
heavy stone
called rip-rap for fill on railways where there were washouts.The process of
drilling and blasting to produce crushed rock required large blast
holes. The
rock formation at Deeks was sandstone. It was comparatively easy rock
to work
with, it did not take a lot of power to break it but it took power to
shatter
it so that it could be dug with a power shovel. This shovel had a
¾
yard bucket
so that pieces of rock could be no larger than 2½ feet in any
direction
and the
crushing unit was capable of taking only a 36" cube.

The blast holes
were laid out by our civil engineer. As I remember the blast hole
drilling
pattern was eight feet apart. The holes were drilled by a machine
similar to
our present day well drill. A rope was used to hoist the drill column
and the
walking beam that made the drill stem churn up and down, was a crank
with a
pulley at the end of it, the flanges of which, came astride of this
drill rope
operated by a crank. As the machine turned throught its revolution, it
gave the
churning action necessary to produce the rise and fall of the drill
stem. The
drill stem must fall freely to produce a blow which chipped away the
rock
little by little. The drill stem and drill bit weighed, probably,
upwards to
one-half ton. The drill bit was 5 5/8" in diameter.A good drill
operator earned about $10.50 a day plus .35¢ per foot. There was
also
some sort
of a premium arrangement which gave the drill operator an incentive to
work
harder and produce more footage, so that as soon as one hole was
drilled they
moved rapidly to begin drilling again.

The same was
true with the loading of crushed rock into the cars that hauled it from
the
quarry pit to the crushing plant. The shovel operators were paid about
$400.00
per month plus their sustenance which was board and lodging at the
plant. In
addition they received the premium rate over and above a normal days
work.Explosives
were
used to break or shatter the rock after it had been drilled and
received the
dynamite charge. These were tremendously massive sticks of explosives,
measuring 4" in diameter by 16" in length. They resembled an armful
of wood when they came out of the dynamite boxes. They were carried to
the
drill holes where they were tapped into the holes and sand tamped on
top of the
hole. This was wired to a dynamite cap set in the explosive itself.
They used
to blast about 30 holes at a time and when the blast was fired,
everything went
BOOM! It was like a small earthquake and could be felt for a radius of
about
two miles.

Next came the
grading of the rock. This was done by means of screens. We sold various
sizes
of crushed rock - the heaviest was 2½ - 3" in diameter of rough
nodules
of
rock. We had coarse grades and fine grades -the finest was ¾" in
diameter.
The top layer of rock ballast was about 1½" in
diameter, just the right size for tamping under the railroad ties.The crushing
plant was a very dusty place because the rock was sandstone. Sandstone
gives
off a very white powder almost like talcum powder.

In the
beginning the plant was powered by steam but only until Hydro Electric
power
became available. Then the plant had to be converted from steam engine
drives
to electric motor drives. The transaction was quite interesting because
they
must dispose of all the big pulleys that had driven the rock crushers
by means
of a flat leather belt between a drive shaft and driven shaft. These
rock
crushers required 300-400 horsepower to turn the motors after a load of
rock
had been dumped on top of them.
When the plant
was converted we did not have the present day V-belts so ropes were
used. They
were 16 to 24 ropes in width and the pulleys were grooved to
accommodate them.
Each had to be spliced by a man who was highly skilled and extremely
adept at
working with cordage. The rope drive was probably 25 feet between the
pulleys
of these heavy machines, so each rope must be exactly the correct
length.V-belts
did
become available and we were able to abandon the rope belts in 1930.
The
V-belts were very strong and lasted for many years. But they were
extremely
dangerous as people could get their clothing caught in them. As my job
was
maintenance, we were called upon to
produce guards for all the V-belts used in the plant.Let us look at
the transporting of the raw material from the quarry pit to the rock
crushers.
Grenville Crushed Rock used a series of saddleback locomotives. They
were small
locomotives, a one man unit - the man who was engineer was also fireman
and
brakeman. He hauled 3 small cars which held about three cubic yards of
rock or
four power shovel scoops. When the train was loaded, the engineer
tooted the
whistle and drove the train backwards to the crushing plant. This was
level
track until he came to the base of the incline at the crushing plant.
Here they
uncoupled the cars one at a time and a donkey engine hauled the cars,
one at a
time, up the incline. Then it got dumped into the primary crusher. The
empty
car came back down the incline and was switched on to another track.
This
procedure was repeated for each car. Meantime the man who drove the
saddleback
engine was switching the engine over to the tracks on which they were
putting
the empty cars. When they got three cars emptied, he latched on to them
and
went back to the loading zone again. This operation continued all day.

A man at the
base of the incline had a board on which he kept track of the number of
loads
of rock that came up the incline. This had to tally with the power
shovel
operators score.On
the other side
of the plant were the bin chutes from which the crushed rock came out
into the
railway cars. From there it was hauled up the mainline and dumped on to
the
tracks in the form of rock ballast. These rock cars held about
sixty-five tons
each and were handled by yard engines. These engines were full scale
locomotives usually classified as yard engines and used for shunting
cars in
railway yards at divisional points. When we got a trainload of rock it
was of
considerable weight and value.

All the
equipment that we had was serviced on the premises by the machine shop,
the
boiler shop, the forge shop and the welding shop. In 1926, when I
arrived at
Deeks, I already was a technical school graduate but I came under the
jurisdiction of the machinist, the boiler maker, the forge smith and
the chief
welder. I had to learn all those skills in order to become a competent
person
who could produce good sound overhaul jobs on any piece of equipment
that our
plant needed or used in the process of production.It
was an extremely
interesting season, beginning in early April and running to the end of
November. Then we would go through each of these units and examine
every part
so that when we took it out in the spring, we were sure, it was ready
for use
for the entire season. Rock crushing was a rough operation
It has been a
pleasure to renumerate the many processes at our old plant at Deeks and
I'm
very happy to have been able to do it for what it is worth, in a
historical
sense, in this area, at this late date. I am now seventy-seven years of
age and
my days in industry have long since passed me by. Thank you.

Article by Addy Schwalm in Branchline August/september 1982, page 10

Harry McLean's Quarry

An interesting thing I saw in CP Rail News for May 20 was a story on
Harry McLean's quarry that was once near Merrickville. My interest
started around 1948 or 1949 when through my ad in the old "Railroad
Magazine" I met two Ottawa high school students who at that time were
interested in railroading. One of them by the name of Arnold Millar was
able to get his father's car on a Saturday and four of us went to this
quarry, which at that time had a spur running off the main line. A sign
board near the switch stand said "Deeks". I believe this quarry was a
very large hole in the ground, so big in area it held a small yard. As
I remember, it held four tracks, two of them with high sided dump cars.
Another had a string of construction cars, and the last, passenger
cars, all pretty well dilapidated with paint peeling, boards loose, and
wheels and draft gear well rusted. However, his private car and another
one were in pretty good shape. In fact, I took an interior shot of the
car with the crew sitting in wicker easy chairs. It was equipped with a
stove, dining room and sleeper bunks. The real interesting part,
though, was another track which held two 0-6-0's in very good shape, I
was sorry later that I failed to take pictures of the two huge steam
shovels that were standing separately on their own short stretch of
track.

Also standing by themselves were two little Porter 0-4-0's. They were
narrow gauge and as you can image pretty well gone but I got their
pictures as well. The last I heard of this equipment was that it all
went for scrap. I doubt if I could find the spot again for it has all
been overgrown in trees and shrubs. When we first went in the road was
just a trail but now there is a little bettor gravel road. I never went
back, but I do go near the place quite often.